There are two ways you can authenticate to Windows Azure. You can store a username and password or you can use a certificate. If you want to authenticate with a password see How to: Connect to your subscription My preference is to use a certificate.
Certificate Authentication
The Windows Azure PowerShell module includes cmdlets that help you download and import the certificate.
The Get-AzurePublishSettingsFile cmdlet opens a web page on the Windows Azure Management Portal, from which you can download the subscription information. The information is contained in a .publishsettings file.
The Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile imports the .publishsettings file for use by the module. This file includes a management certificate that has security credentials.
Important We recommend that you delete the publishing profile that you downloaded using Get-AzurePublishSettingsFile after you import those settings. Because the management certificate includes security credentials, it should not be accessed by unauthorized users. If you need information about your subscriptions, you can get it from the Windows Azure Management Portal or the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal .
...

I had on my to do list to write a detailed post on how to remove the Windows.Old folder after upgrading. While reading through some Rick Claus I noticed he already had a great post on it. Thanks Rick, you saved me a bit of work. You can find the Step-By-Step on his blog at How To: Delete Windows.Old from an upgraded Windows 10 / Threshold system . These instructions use the Download Junction.EXE from Sysinternals to do the heavy lifting. The identical instructions should work for prior versions of Windows Client or Window Server as well (back to 2000). In a future post, I may opt to build on it with PowerShell and just give you one quick script to do it all. But for now. Task complete!!!
See Microsoft KB article for tips on using junctions. ...read more

Note: These are NOT Microsoft events. However, since Microsoft IT-Camps are not open to the public this year, I thought these might be of interest.
Cloud management-as-a-Service provider Infrastructure Guardian and Microsoft offer two days of hands-on training sessions for cloud computing with a focus on Infrastructure-as-a-Service and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform for business. Starting in March the tour will make stops in Microsoft offices in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Hartford and Washington, D.C., with more cities added shortly.
The bring-your-own-laptop training is hosted by experienced senior cloud technology specialists and designed to give technical decision makers valuable insights into a best practice approach for a transition to increased cloud infrastructure in key IT scenarios. Topics covered include Azure Portal overview, storage, disaster recovery, virtual machine set up and automation, hybrid cloud, Azure Active Directory and identity management, systems management, and other Azure offerings.
Tour Dates:
· New York – March 11 & 12 – Register
Microsoft Office – New York – 11 Times Square, New York City, NY 10036
· Boston –...

Lab 5: Building Application Workloads – Deploy Data Access App
Configure endpoints for WEBFE01
In this task, you will configure the required public endpoints for WEBFE01 .
Perform the following tasks in the Azure management portal .
In the Azure management portal, click in VIRTUAL MACHINES .
Click WEBFE01 , and then click ENDPOINTS .
Click ADD .
In ADD ENDPOINT , click the Next arrow.
In Name , select HTTP , and then click the Completed button.
Click ADD .
In ADD ENDPOINT , click the Next arrow.
In Name , select HTTPS , and then click the Completed button.
You will have to wait for the endpoint to be created then continue
Click ADD .
In ADD ENDPOINT , click the Next arrow.
In NAME , type Custom5000 .
In PUBLIC PORT and PRIVATE PORT , type 5000 , and then click the Completed button.
Click ADD .
In ADD ENDPOINT , click the Next arrow.
In NAME , type Custom5001 .
In PUBLIC PORT and PRIVATE PORT , type 5001 , and then click the Completed button.
Click Dismiss Completed in Azure Portal after all are done
Configure firewall ports for WEBFE01
Next, you must enable WEBFE01 to communicate internally within the service. While general IP connectivity is provided...

Lab 4 Building Application & SQL Workloads
Create a new web server virtual machine from the Microsoft Azure management portal
You will create a new virtual machine to run the web application. You can create this VM using quick create; however, that will not enable you to specify the service or storage, and will create separate storage and services for this VM. You will use the gallery option to ensure you can specify the storage and services for the VM.
Perform the following tasks in the Azure management portal :
Click VIRTUAL MACHINES located on the left menu of the Azure management portal.
Click +New to CREATE A VIRTUAL MACHINE .
Click COMPUTE , click VIRTUAL MACHINE , and then click FROM GALLERY .
In Choose an Image , click Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter , and then click the Next arrow.
Create a new virtual machine using the values in the following table, and then click the Next arrow.
Property
Value
VIRTUAL MACHINE NAME
WEBFE01
TIER
Standard
SIZE
A2
NEW USER NAME
SysAdmin
NEW PASSWORD and CONFIRM
Passw0rd!
On the Virtual machine configuration page...

Azure Active Directory is a service that provides identity and access management capabilities in the cloud. In much the same way that Active Directory is a service made available to customers through the Windows Server operating system for on-premises identity management, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a service that is made available through Azure for cloud-based identity management. Azure AD can be used as a standalone cloud directory for your organization, but you can also integrate existing on-premises Active Directory with Azure AD. Some of the features of integration include directory sync, password sync and single sign-on, which further extend the reach of your existing on-premises identities into the cloud for an improved admin and end user experience.
Create a new Azure Active Directory environment
In this task, you will create a new Azure Active Directory tenant.
Perform the following tasks in the Azure management portal .
In the Azure management portal, click ACTIVE DIRECTORY .
Click NEW , click APP SERVICES , click ACTIVE DIRECTORY , click DIRECTORY , and then click CUSTOM CREATE .
In NAME , type Contoso-AZ-Directory .
In DOMAIN NAME , type AzureCONTOSO<ID>...

Lab 2: Building Workloads
Azure virtual machines give you the flexibility of virtualization without spending the time and money to buy and maintain the hardware that hosts the virtual machine. However, you do need to maintain the virtual machine — configuring, patching, and maintaining the operating system and any other software that runs on the virtual machine. In this lab you are going to deploy 2 virtual machines into Azure for the two workloads of identity and database. You will create these two virtual machines:
A Domain Controller (DC01)
A SQL Server (SQL01)
Deploy a domain controller in Microsoft Azure
In this task, you will deploy a new virtual machine(VM) to function as a domain controller in your newly created virtual network created in Lab01. As you provision the VM you will leverage a custom script extension to install Active Directory as a part of the provisioning process. Custom Script Extensions can automatically download scripts and files from Azure Storage and launch a PowerShell script on the VM. These scripts can be used to install additional software components, and in this lab you will use it to install Active Directory. Like the any other VM extensions...

In a prior post , I showed you how to manually configure your computer to enable ExecutionPolicy so you can run Powershell scripts. To make it even better, I now have a powershell script that will create the .REG files you need so all you have to do is run the script and double-click on the file. The script also shows some other pretty cool tricks like opening a dialog box to get a folder path and creating a text file. Simply Copy and paste the following code into PowerShell or PowerShell ISE and watch the magic <#
================================================================================
========= Introduction to BuildRegFiles.ps1 =======================================
================================================================================
Name: BuildRegFiles.ps1
Purpose: Build Registry files needed to enable Execution of Powershell scripts
Author: Dan Stolts - dstolts@microsoft.com - http://ITProGuru.com
Syntax/Execution: Simply Copy entire script contents and paste into PowerShell (or ISE) :)
Then follow on-screen prompts
Description:
Creates Registry files and puts them in the default folder
Allows user to select default folder. If not...

Watch the interview here!
Dan Stolts, Microsoft, visits #theCUBE!
Dan Stolts Shared His Background at Microsoft
Microsoft View of Virtualization andCloud
Enterprise IT and the Consumer
The Infrastructures of Service -What’s Hot
The Hybrid Cloud Discussion
Microsoft Active Directory Today
How the Microsoft Certification World is Changing
Microsoft Transition to Cloud Training
UserPain: Patching and Updating
The Balance Between Cloud and On Premise
Technology ando Channel Partners in Microsoft ...read more

Thank you to those who attended our Panel Discussion Webinar: Deconstructing the Hyper-Converged Paradigm and congratulations to the winners of our drawing!
Johnny from TriQuint – $100 Gift Card
Tom from Stockport Council – £100 Gift Card
William from Anderson Kill & Olick, P.C. – $100 Gift Card
See below to watch the recording of the webinar.
Watch Now>> ...read more

How do you navigate in a touch world without a touch device? I am glad you asked. This post will address that question in great detail but we will also look at all the other great things you can do with keyboard and mouse shortcuts. Read It, to understand what you have been missing. Bookmark it, to use as a reference while you get accustomed to the incredible power you still have at your finger tips without ever leaving home row! We will start off with what is new with Windows 8.1 but keep reading because there are probably plenty of other shortcuts that have been around for years and you simply were not aware of them. Lastly, if there are other shortcuts that you know about, please add a comment to share with the world.
Most of what you know about using a mouse and keyboard with Windows has stayed the same, especially in the desktop. Here are some ways to use both new and familiar Windows features with a mouse and with keyboard shortcuts. Please also note that there are often multiple ways to perform the same action. I will be giving you more than one method to perform an action in some cases but in many cases there are more more ways to perform the same action…
...

I have been struggling with this for a while. Excel puts the word (blank) on a pivot table field if it does not have any data. I want the field displayed without data. I see in Excel 2013 there is a checkbox under Pivot Table options but I could not get...

You could of course manually configure RDP to listen on different ports to allow connection from other standard or non-standard ports. In my case, I need to be able to RDP to an Azure Virtual Machine from a local school or customer office where the IT department has blocked port 3389. There is a new Virtual Machine Type in the Azure Image Gallery called “ Windows Server Essentials Experience Windows Server 2012 R2 ”. This machine already has Windows Server Essentials Experience role enabled so it is a simple matter to configure everything so someone can connect with HTTPS (via VPN) to an RDP Server. We will leverage this image for this Step-By-Step post. By default when you create a new machine the Windows Server Essentials Experience is not “configured” for Anywhere Access (VPN) functionalities and you have to Remote Control to the server to configure it. Therefore, I will be leveraging an artificial [Magic] “ port swap ” by managing end points for the server using the Azure End Points Configure screen to configure Windows Server Essentials Experience. These procedures will work for Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter as well. You only need to use the Essentials image if you need Anywhere...

There are many options for migrating SQL databases to Azure. With the latest technology you can move just the database and log files, or you can move the entire system. You could move to Azure SQL Database or you could migrate to a VM running SQL Server. The methods that you chose to move will likely depend on what tools you are currently using, your experience with SQL Server and your SQL needs once the database is in Azure. To cover all of this would probably require a 30 part blog post which unfortunately, I do not have the time to write now. In this detailed article we will touch on many of these and provide Step-By-Step guidance for the most popular methods. If you are on the most recent version of SQL Server (2014) there are far more options available to you. Since many may not have that available to them, and migrating from 2014 is so super simple , I will spend most efforts on broader availability solutions. What is super simple you ask…
Right-Click on the database you want to move; click Tasks and you have a boat load of options for getting your database moved to Azure. Including “ Deploy Database to Windows Azure SQL Database… ” or “ Deploy Database to a Windows Azure...

In this post, I will teach you how to determine what user has administrative rights on the server as well as walk you Step-By-Step how to configure SQL Server to allow other users to login as Administrators to SQL Server. The generic message “Login Failed for User (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18456)” means you entered invalid credentials when logging into SQL Server. In the below screen shot, I am logging into Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio with a user that does not have administrative permissions to connect to the server.
You need to figure out what user does have rights to SQL server. Usually this is the user that you logged in with when you installed SQL Server or the user that is the default administrator on the computer. To get a list of users on the machine (Assuming Windows Server 2012 or above)
Step-By-Step
Launch Server Manager – Start – Click Server Manager
In the upper right corner, click Tools, then Computer Management
Expand Local Users and Groups (Under Computer Management-System Tools) then click Users
Notice under Description… There is a Built-in account for administering… This is very likely an account that has access to SQL server. Try logging...

It is always important to understand how our server workloads are doing. Getting visibility into our systems allows us to proactively deal with future issues. As an example, monitoring can let us know that we are running out of disk space on one of our volumes so we can order drives and get them install before a catastrophic event happens. Monitoring can also alert us of future outages due to hardware failure. I have been able to save downtime by catching through monitoring that a disk drive or disk controller is having problems. Without monitoring we would not find out about these things until they fail completely and the service is brought down hard. Though virtualization technology has changed our world for the better, it brought with it some unique challenges. The biggest of which is probably that we have to use tools to understand our infrastructure. No longer could we go “see” our “touch” our servers. This problem is compounded even more as we move to the cloud. Not only are these workloads not directly visible, they are not even in our data centers. In the technology space, if we want to continue to grow we have to continue to learn and continue to solve problems....

In part 4 of our “ Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud ” series, Blain Barton and Keith Mayer tackle the topic of virtualization in a Hybrid Cloud environment. Tune in as they discuss how virtualization is no longer constrained to the physical capacity of an on-premise environment and then showcase some tools and techniques that are available in Microsoft Azure that can help assist your move to Hybrid cloud virtualization.
• [1:26] What do you see as some of the differences or new opportunities that IT Pros need to consider when planning virtualization for a Hybrid Cloud environment?
• [3:31] How do traditional IT Pro virtualization skills translate into Hybrid Cloud?
• [5:05] When planning Hybrid Cloud virtualization, how should IT Pros approach it?
• [8:01] You mentioned Azure Pack – what is that?
• [10:51] If I already have an existing Hyper-V environment with custom VM templates defined, can I leverage them with Azure Pack?
• [11:03] DEMO: Let’s see some of this in action
Follow the series!
Download Windows Server 2012 R2 Evaluation
Start Your 30 Day Windows Azure Trial ...read more

Kevin Remde and Keith Mayer continue our series on “ Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud ” and in today’s episode they discuss various options for networking. Tune in as they go in depth on what options are available for hybrid cloud networking as they explore network connectivity and address concerns about speed, reliability and security.
• [2:46] What components are involved in Hybrid Cloud Networking?
• [5:30] What are some of the technical capabilities of Hybrid Cloud networking?
• [9:25] Which VPN gateways are supported with Microsoft Azure?
• [11:28] What are some of the common scenarios that customers are implementing for Hybrid Cloud networking?
• [15:40] Besides Site-to-Site IPSec VPNs, are there any other connectivity options for Hybrid Cloud networking?
• [20:10] DEMO: Can you walk us through the basic steps for setting up a Hybrid Cloud network?
Follow the series! http://aka.ms/ModernCloud
Download Windows Server 2012 R2 Evaluation
Start Your 30 Day Windows Azure Trial ...read more

Create Firewall Rules in Windows 7 thru Windows Server 2012 R2 to allow RDP and ICMP traffic for you have to open “Windows Firewall with Advanced Security” control panel applet. You can get here by typing “firewall” in the search box near the start button and selecting it from the list (likely on top) or you can go to control panel.
Tested on : Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2018, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2
Start – Control Panel – System and Security – Windows Firewall – Advanced Settings
Note: You could also get to control panel from the Windows-X drop down menu
This will bring up the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Screen.
Click on Inbound Rules
The easy way to allow Ping is to enable the existing ICMP rules.
Enable ICMP (PING) Existing Rule(s)
You could scroll down and select File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request – ICMPv4-in) – Right Click and Select Enable Rule (Notice you will have one for multiple networks, you can enable the only the Domain network if you are in a domain environment or enable both if you want to enable on private networks also.
Notice there are ICMPv4 and ICMPv6. If you are using (or...

In this detailed post and hands on lab (HOL) guide we will introduce Windows Azure backup and dive in deep with step-by-step instructions you can use to schedule a backup, perform a manual backup of your server and perform a test restore.The post assumes only that you have a server that you want to backup to Windows Azure.If you do not already have a LiveID/Microsoft Account and Windows Azure account, you can create them with the instructions in the prerequisites which will take about 20 mins.The remainder of the steps (including creating the self-signed certificate) will take less than 40 mins to complete.If you find this guide/post helpful please tweet…
Tweet:
Checkout @ITProGuru Backup Windows Server Using Windows Azure Backup Step-By-Step http://ITProGuru.com/azBackup
What is Windows Azure Backup?
Windows Azure Backup helps protect server data against loss and corruption by enabling backup to offsite cloud storage in Windows Azure . It provides a consistent experience configuring, monitoring, and recovering backups across local disk and cloud storage, integrating with the in-box backup program in Microsoft Windows Server or System Center Data Protection Manager.
Windows...

Kevin Remde and Dan Stolts continue our series on “ Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud ” with an overview on how to plan for a hybrid cloud storage solution using Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure. Tune in for this lively discussion on the many storage options available to you as well as discussions around performance, reliability and security. • [1:18] Let’s start with a quick summary of existing storage capabilities using modern infrastructure on-premises as supported by Windows Server 2012 R2 • [10:16] What is Azure Storage? • [11:17] Can you give us a quick overview of Azure Storage Architecture? • [12:30] In order to connect local systems to Azure Storage accounts, I have to think there is some kind of authentication required to make that happen securely. How is that done? • [16:00] What is Blob Storage? • [17:30] What are some common uses of Azure File Storage? • [18:18] Is Azure data reliable? • [21:10] Since we can access storage from Azure services or from our on-premises services, what kind of performance can we expect? • [23:17] I understand we can take snapshots of data in Azure. Can you...

Have you seen this incredible tool. Microsoft hit a home run with this little gem. The Azure Cost Estimator Tool will allow you to scan a machine, a virtualization host or even an entire Virtual Machine Manager Network. The Azure (IaaS) Cost Estimator has been designed keeping in mind the need to provide the IT manager of next generation organizations the ability to quickly assess running cost of the existing on-premises workload on Azure. It is not just for on-premises though. If you have hosted servers or servers running on other cloud platforms like AWS, run a scan to see what you can save by moving them to Azure.
The Azure (IaaS) Cost Estimator Tool does analysis on all the RUNNING computers including virtual machines (selectable) and spits out by machine a bunch of consumption statistics including:
CPU
Memory (GB)
Memory Consumed %
Disk (GB)
Disk Consumed %
Avg Disk Transactions (per min)
Total Disk Transactions/30 days
Avg Bandwidth (MB/min)
Total Bandwidth (GB)/30 days
Click a “ Get Cost ” button and another feat of software magic happens. It then takes that information, checks the prices on Azure (US) and calculates what...

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit makes it easy to assess your current IT infrastructure for a variety of technology migration projects. This Solution Accelerator provides a powerful inventory, assessment, and reporting tool to simplify the migration planning process. It … Continue reading → ...read more